always seemed just as you describe. friendly platform for the lot, sort of like a16z kept trying to spawn to go direct. yet Altman is concerned about its independence. Comedy.

According to the Times:

I am an indie publisher. I spend a good chunk of my time and budget securing legal rights to writing and art.

But apparently those rules are for us mere mortals. Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, and the US govt (see recent propaganda vid full of unlicensed cips) can just take whatever they want. 😡😡😡

Fun fact. The Judge in this copyright case is the same as a massive 2018 MDL for Facebook privacy violations which he had to sanction Facebook->Meta's attorneys for discovery shenanigans. And led to a record privacy settlement. /8

Discovery Letter Brief – #695 in Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc. (N.D. Cal., 3:23-cv-03417) – CourtListener.com Joint Discovery Letter Briefre In Camera Review filed by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Junot Diaz, Christopher Farnsworth, Christopher Golden, Andrew Sean Greer, David Henry Hwang, Richard Kadrey, Matthew Klam, L...

And finally, Van Der Linde says I'm out of here, "I don't agree with any of this." Reassign me off this data team as "I don't like the lets-use-data-that-should-not-be-public-so-we-dont-have-to-pay-for-it approach." Full arguments, Meta response... storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us... /7

(I say that as Facebook did the same sort of circumvention with data broker data in its 'Project Lighthouse' in order to keep its surveillance advertising biz growing after its data scandals and cover-ups surfaced in 2018 and it had to cut off data brokers). /6

Melanie apparently sent him back to another employee who had (mostly) found a way to torrent copyright materials in bulk without sharing "seeding" them back upstream to others. The back and forth on circumvention of copyright law and abusing it is textbook Zuckerberg/Facebook. /5

So after the back and forth he goes back to the executive and says "Subject: Hey Melanie, I'm feeling quite uncomfortable with this task." /4

See Van Der Linde was apparently asked by superiors to torrent an illegal database full of known copyrighted material which is "not very legal" and he also groks that just making sure their LLM doesn't reproduce a "Copyright New York Times 2022" ain't too kosher either. /3

As I read it, there are two improper redactions of employee (Van Der Linde) concerns at the top which we will get to see. They come shortly before a response from response by Meta exec, Melanie Kambadur, "Let's start a thread with our legal team." So what were his concerns? /2

OK, this may be a super interesting development. Court orders Meta to file revised Exhibit D in massive copyright lawsuit playing out against it. Here is the context. /1

Opinion | Politicians Are Trying to Control the News The rising global attacks on the free press reveal increasingly desperate regimes attempting to snuff out attempts to find the truth.

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com

“By trying to silence journalists, autocrats and aspiring autocrats hope to make the world ignore what they are doing. The rest of us should refuse to do so,” the editorial board writes.

ICE detains reporter Estefany Rodríguez in Nashville - Nashville Banner Reporter Estefany Rodríguez, detained by ICE with no arrest warrant, may face deportation. Her attorneys seek immediate review of the legality of her case.

ICE has arrested and detained a Nashville journalist who reported stories critical of ICE. She’s married to a U.S. citizen and has been seeking asylum here after fleeing death threats in Colombia because of her journalism there.

They’ve already sent her to Louisiana.

Google’s lead proxy for years in company relations to the news industry (Richard Gingras) has regularly made this point, too suggesting news has zero value. It’s absurd on its face and quite offensive for someone who has made his entire career at Google about being supportive of news.

Hey NZ & RNZ’s Mediawatch, if you’re following @kint.bsky.social I highly recommend him media analysis.

Case in point below— Canada’s news bargaining with the tech giants is working :)

Bold, Meta. As I read this, Meta is arguing in a court of law that its use of BitTorrent to transfer pirated works was Fair Use because it helped them be more efficient in doing it.

"...these frameworks keep the government out of the business of picking the winners and losers in the press...not through political discretion.

That safeguard is not theoretical. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom curtailed funding for a similar measure after it passed into law"

THIS IS WINNING!!

Goals scored: Canada proved news bargaining works The Olympic hockey gold medals were both determined by bruising 2-1 overtime games. Both between the United States and

Wrote this last night as Meta was going on 🇨🇦 TV and misleading public on what is arguably one of the most successful acts of any parliament to bring funding to a free and plural press. It’s working, just not for Meta whose biz doesnt like to pay for “data.” digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2026/02...

That’s the entire point. Google is an adjudged illegal monopoly with 93% of search market. It’s not a business reality that a publisher can actually block its bots and opt not to participate in its scheme of scraping pages, user data/clicks in return for traffic and AI Overviews training.

You keep introducing false information to this thread. Not sure why. Only Google and Meta fall under the act, due to their market power, so GenAI adding links doesn’t trigger some sort of payment for anyone else. And the suggestion of no benefits ignores $100 million per year - see my column.

Show me this language that was actually passed into law. Wikipedia was never anywhere near being a platform with bargaining power imbalance as Google and Facebook were… at least not in any parliament I track close enough. Thx.

Not actually. Again that’s what the lobby said. Technically it just used links as part of the description of the role of a gatekeeper, at least until Google decided to substitute that traffic with its over GenAI trained on those very pubs by tying to its illegal monopoly.

ps read the piece. It’s actually working in Canada. It’s law. They were wrong, and their lobby was paid to support their losing cause.

Why would you call it a “link tax?” That’s the exact term the Google/Facebook lobbyplex worked to label it. It’s not a tax ($ goes in deals between private companies) and it’s not based on clicks or links. It’s a stick and carrot to do deals when one side has an imbalance in bargaining power.

Confession: I predicted last year that Judge Brinkema in Eastern District of Virginia would issue her remedies opinion by end of February in U.S. v Google. To force divestiture. That’s in the next 24 hours. Polymarket has my odds super low. Alas.

Goals scored: Canada proved news bargaining works The Olympic hockey gold medals were both determined by bruising 2-1 overtime games. Both between the United States and

Wrote this last night as Meta was going on 🇨🇦 TV and misleading public on what is arguably one of the most successful acts of any parliament to bring funding to a free and plural press. It’s working, just not for Meta whose biz doesnt like to pay for “data.” digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2026/02...

When you put it that way, Renee.

Confession: I predicted last year that Judge Brinkema in Eastern District of Virginia would issue her remedies opinion by end of February in U.S. v Google. To force divestiture. That’s in the next 24 hours. Polymarket has my odds super low. Alas.

watch this space. especially if discovery opens back up. 9th already sent it back down to district, here we go.